Your society ruled by laws sounds interesting, would you care to support that assertion in the face of Congress making sure many laws they inflict on the people do not actually apply to them?

Intimidation online vs the intimidation of our leaders using “brown people” and terrorists as the reason for vacating all of our civil liberties?

Last I looked LuLzSec were sailing off laughing their asses off, they set out on a mission and they proved it.  Funny how more time is spent trying to find the LuLzBoat in the Bermuda triangle of the internet than to … oh I dunno deal with the embarrassing state of online security and the complete failure of an international corporation to keep customer records safe and then decide they own enough congresscritters to skip the congressional hearings on the matter.

Legal consequences just got serious, America has been declared a battlefield and US citizens can and will be held without the benefit of the rule of law that is the law of the land.

As to the poor people hurt by these cybercrimes…
Name them.
I’ll start…
The Sony Network Hacks – 1,2,3,4,5, et al.
ZOMG Anon got the credit card numbers, except they never managed to proved it was Anonymous beyond a questionable text file asserting blame to them conveniently found on the server.
What everyone wants to overlook is the ease with which Sony online assets went down around the globe, infact one was running a Control and Command server for malware, and to pretend the people who accessed the system were the first and only people to gain access to the Sony network shows a lack of imagination.  They had no security, they did not encrypt CC#’s they took no steps to protect customers because that might cost them a few dollars.  The people who outed Sony as being inept actually helped people.
People learned Sony was doing NOTHING to keep their information secure, and might have been the source of several CC#’s getting compromised.
People learned that using the same password everywhere means your a freaking moron, people screaming because they had to change all of their passwords now because it was published online shows a certain selfcentered thinking pattern that security is the other guys problem.

The Sony hack required no real skill or talent, but funny I do not see Sony in court having to cover costs for the people they left hanging. 

Its been entertaining ripping your post apart, but you really should try harder.  Or are you thinking the little boy who stuck his finger in the dike and saved the country should have been sued for showing everyone shoddy dike construction?

It is Anonymous who has the “kneejerk reaction,” by not taking the time to think out the legal consequences of their actions. The people effected by those cyber crimes lives will move on, but they will be justified in seeking civil suits against those who committed those crimes.

Oh, and I actually am anonymous.
Sometimes. Some places.

:D

Political process is all about anonymity of a sort – true responsible never get to see the judgment – so you do not have to crave to new faceless overlords. Your actual overlords are already faceless and possess much more power.

Though, at the same time, you’ve got the case of the WW II veteran who was having a birthday party. Anonymous found out, and the family eventually had to plead with them to stop sending cards, cakes, and presents, because they had no room.

Anonymous just does things.

Mostly, they like to bring Grief on whatever their groupthink definition of Evil is on any given day. So to channel them, you’d have to convince them that a target is Evil, and that a Grief is actionable, “fun”, and very easy.
Griefers gonna grief.

The thing is that they really didn’t. The vast majority of people who use credit cards had no idea that any of this was going on at all. Any effect was after the fact and would in fact make people more likely to, say, support laws to “crack down on internet terrorists”.

(sorry – couldn’t resist :D )